Snapshot: Baby Dillon and proud Noah

Two-year-old Noah arrived home from a birthday party clutching a sheet of football stickers. He was delighted to see his baby brother, Dillon, at home.

"Baby Dillon", as we always called him – and still do –lived most of the time in our local hospital.

Born in March 2006, his brain developed wrongly in the womb, and he never reached any developmental milestones. He was plagued by severe, unrelenting seizures. But Noah enjoyed having his baby brother with us. He loved to cuddle and prod him, and stroke his cheeks.

On this day, Noah set about decorating Dillon with his new football stickers and I took a photograph, eager to capture a scene of them together without medical equipment in it. It looks like Dillon is craning to see what is going on – although he couldn't see, we like to think he was aware of his brother's administrations.

When Dillon died, aged 14 months, our double life of shuttling back and forth between home and hospital ended, and a new chapter began.

A year later, Noah started school and for the first time we met families who didn't know he had once had a little brother. When new friends arrive for playdates, Noah proudly takes this photograph down off the mantle, to introduce them to Baby Dillon, our precious, lost boy. Carol Nahra

Playlist: A life on the deck in New Zealand

River of Time by Van Morrison

"Heart and soul, body and mind / meet me on the river of time"

My childhood is probably best described as idyllic, however over-used that phrase might seem, and one of the best places to spend such a childhood in New Zealand is on the deck. In my case, it was spent on a deck my father built himself (a later addition to the house, which he had also built) overlooking a domain of native bush, a river and Mount Taranaki/Egmont. Over time the trees have grown ever more imposing and threaten to block out the prized mountain view – but the tallest has died before our eyes in the last two years.

On this deck we have hosted countless barbecues, when twilight steals slowly across the sky and the progression from afternoon beer to dinner on a picnic table to nightcap blends seamlessly. The smell of chargrilled meat mingles with the garden jasmine and the cool night air. All around, there is birdsong: tui, grey warbler, blackbird, starling, mynah … punctuated by the deep "whoosh" of a swooping kereru coming in to land too fast on a too-small tree in the neighbour's backyard. All this is unmistakably home to me. Whoever the company, whatever the occasion, from Christmas dinner in the sun to somebody's 21st birthday, the deck has seen it all and remains the anchor of our family home.

And on the record player inside, for which my father (an early adopter of surround sound) concocted a nifty outdoor speaker system, Van Morrison's Inarticulate Speech of the Heart would spin. There was other music, of course, but it is this album – and River of Time especially – that call so clearly to mind those evenings on the deck. This song can transport me the 11,000 miles to New Zealand once again: from a midwinter London to a Taranaki summer, all in a few chords. Jo Whalley

We love to eat: Truck driver's dahl baht

Ingredients

Knob of ghee or a splash of sunflower oil

1 large white onion, finely chopped

1 heaped dessert spoon of garam masala

1 level dessert spoon of tumeric

1 teaspoon of ground cumin

1 teaspoon of chilli powder

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 inches root ginger, finely chopped

8 roughly chopped tomatoes (or a tin of chopped tomatoes)

1 bag of red split lentils

1l-plus of vegetable stock

Dahl – a lightly spiced thin lentil sauce – and rice is the staple diet of all Nepalis and many Indians. I lived in Nepal as a child in the late 1970s and would be given dahl baht by our neighbours' family when I came round to play (which was a lot). It's funny but though I know Mum's a good cook, I don't remember any home dishes; only dahl from that time. I was rather indifferent about it but everyone ate it.

When we returned to live in England in the 1980s and there were so many terrible famines on the news – first Cambodia, then Ethiopia – my mum decided to hold "famine lunches" every Sunday. All the money she would have spent on a traditional Sunday roast she gave to charity (and any invited guests would be welcomed to donate as well), while we feasted on the much cheaper option of dahl baht. At the time my brothers and I would groan but now I think it was a brilliant idea.

When I was 18, I travelled extensively in India and ate lots more dahl along the way. We hitched a ride, a three-day ride, on the roof of a truck heading to Ladakh. Breathtaking and nerve-splitting scenery, freezing nights, and the most memorable dahl. I would carefully watch the truck driver with hungry anticipation as he prepared his delicious dahl, and it is his version that I cook for my family today. It is slightly more luxurious and thicker than most Nepali dahl. That's the wonderful thing about dahl – it can be seriously cheap, simple and tasty or you can add lots of frills.

First, fry the onions till softened in ghee if you have it, or sunflower oil. Next, chuck in the spices and fry them to really bring out the flavour. Then add the garlic, root ginger and tomatoes. As the mixture bubbles, cover with a thick layer of lentils and stir to coat them all well before adding the veggie stock. He didn't use stock but if you can afford it, go with it.

Let the dahl simmer with the lid off so it reduces, but watch that it doesn't catch and burn. Stir frequently. If it's getting too thick before the lentils are really soft – they should lose any individual shape – then add more liquid. Finish with salt to taste, a knob of butter and some fresh coriander if feeling extravagant.

Serve with rice and give any spare pennies to charity. Susie Moss

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We will pay £25 for every Snapshot, Playlist, We love to eat or Letter to we publish. Email family@theguardian.com or write to Family Life, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please don't send original photographs but do include your address and phone number